Staff meals are the stuff of legends, despite the fact that most professional kitchens use them as an opportunity to get rid of food that’s about to spoil or use odd bits leftover from prep. However, in some kitchens, the “family meals” are a way to unite the team, experiment with future menu items, or give a young cook a chance to shine. On the heels of Staff Meals from Chanterelle (2000) and just before Off the Menu: Staff Meals from America’s Top Restaurants (October 11, 2011) and Restaurant Staff Meals: The Food that Fuels the World’s Best Kitchens (slated for fall 2012), comes an indispensable family meal cookbook from one of the world’s most innovative chefs—The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià (Phaidon), which has just been published. Even if you’re more comfortable navigating cobblestone streets in platforms than wielding a microplane in the kitchen, this book will show even the most harried and clueless of cooks how to prepare a simple dinner at home—and, as an unexpected bonus, it will also be a meal that will forever impress guests. Read more on Vogue.com and purchase it on Phaidon.

Le Fooding Takes On Manhattan

Photographed by William Klein, Vogue, May 1, 1957This year, Le Fooding (the company behind France’s anti-Michelin food guides and festivals) is bringing its third annual American gastronomic celebration to Manhattan. Over the course of two weekends in September, the group will host events with phenomenal food and potent cocktails, music performances and DJ sets, in unexpected and intimate settings all over the city. Read more about the two events and buy tickets on vogue.com.

Haute Horticulture

Photo by Compass GreenDesign innovations are reinvisioning urban agriculture, and in the Summer issue of Edible Brooklyn I profiled three of the latest ways Brooklynites are transforming cramped cribs into edible oases.  

Nick Runkle and Justin Cutter have founded “Compass Green,” a greenhouse on wheels—fueled only by recycled vegetable oil and solar and wind energy—capable of bringing the sustainable agriculture gospel to the masses. Bob Hyland, a 77-year-old Bay Ridge resident, has become a city sensation for spreading the gospel of sub-irrigated planter systems, or SIPs. South Williamsburg resident Britta Riley created Windowfarms, a compact column of modified plastic bottles that transform any window into a teeming mini tower of urban agriculture. 

Learn more about these trendsetters--and be inspired to add a little green into your apartment--read my article here.  

La Séduction: How the French Play the Game of Life

Over a couple glasses of wine, a business acquaintance from France quickly became an intimate friend as we discussed the differences in dating in France and America. I tried to explain exactly what "hooking up" could encompass and that dating was a game with strict rules (including 1. Double the amount of time between his response time and your own. 2. Continue to see other people until you are exclusive.). She voiced her frustration at these unnecessary complications and laughed when I told her how couples become "official" over here. (Her exact words were, "We stopped saying that when we were ten!")

In Elaine Sciolino's new book, La Séduction, former New York Times Paris bureau chief tries to uncover how France and the French succeed at charming the rest of the world -- and each other. From the social bise andbaisemain, or traditional kiss of the hand greeting, to the multiple definitions of seduire, and even the overtly sexual commercials, Sciolino covers them all.

To read the rest of my Huffington Post review, click here.

The “John Travolta” and More: Princess Diana’s Dresses Hit the Auction Block This Week

In 1985, Princess Diana wore this Victor Edelstein midnight blue silk velvet dress to a State Dinner at the White House hosted by former President Reagan. Photo: Courtesy of Waddington Auction House Once upon a time, women everywhere clipped photos of a certain iconic princess, studying and copying her every look. Tomorrow, a new princess is emerging as a stylesetter in her own right, but as the newlywed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge descend on Toronto for their first official visit to North America, Diana’s dresses are again commanding attention.

Tomorrow, Waddington’s auction house will host the highly anticipated sale of fourteen dresses that once belonged to the late Princess Diana. Up on the block is the Walker-designed cream crepe silk dress Mario Testino photographed Diana in for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1997, as well as the midnight-blue off-the-shoulder dress the princess wore when she famously hit the dance floor of the 1985 White House State Dinner with John Travolta for a medley of songs from his movies.

Most of the dresses are estimated at between $175,000 to $550,000, but Waddington’s gauges the show-stopping blue velvet “John Travolta” dress to go for up to $1 million; the entire collection is expected to fetch up to $6 million. To view and read more about all of the dresses and find out how to follow the auction and bid online, read my article in its entirety on vogue.com.